Introduction
Running large language models locally has always been a game of compromise. You either spend $10,000+ on consumer GPUs that can barely handle 70 B parameter models, or you dream about enterprise hardware you’ll never afford. The Grace-Hopper platform—Nvidia’s unified CPU-GPU superchip architecture—represents the kind of dream-rig AI infrastructure LocalLlama drools over, with systems typically costing well over $100,000 and exclusively available to data centers and research institutions.
So when I stumbled across a Grace-Hopper system being sold for 10K euro on Reddit, my first thought was “obviously fake.” My second thought was “I wonder if he’ll take 7.5K euro?”.
This is the story of how I bought enterprise-grade AI hardware designed for liquid-cooled server racks that was converted to air cooling, re-converted it back to water cooling, survived multiple near-disasters (including GPUs reporting temperatures of 16 million degrees), and ended up with a desktop that can run 235B parameter models at home. It’s a tale of questionable decisions, creative problem-solving, and what happens when you try to turn datacenter equipment into a daily driver.
If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to run truly large models locally, or if you’re just here to watch someone disassemble $80,000 worth of hardware with nothing but hope and isopropanol, you’re in the right place.
The Deal
Early this year, while browsing r/LocalLLaMA/new, I came across a ridiculously good deal. How good? These were the specs for the server offered for 10K euro, and a serious upgrade to my 4x RTX 4090 rig:
Specs:
- 2x Nvidia Grace-Hopper Superchip
- 2x 72-core Nvidia Grace CPU
- 2x Nvidia Hopper H100 Tensor Core GPU
- 2x 480GB of LPDDR5X memory with error-correction code (ECC)
- 2x 96GB of HBM3 memory
- 1152GB of total fast-access memory
- NVLink-C2C: 900 GB/s of bandwidth
- Programmable from 1000W to 2000W TDP (CPU + GPU + memory)
- 1x High-efficiency 3000W PSU 230V to 48V
- 2x PCIe Gen4 M.2 22110/2280 slots on board
- 4x FHFL PCIe Gen5 x16
UPDATE:Since I bought this, DDR5 RAM prices have become insane. 960GB of fast DDR5 now costs more than what I paid for the whole Grace-Hopper system 🤯
Obviously fake I thought, because
- H100s cost about 30-40,000 euro each, and this system has two of them
- Grace-Hopper NVL2 systems are basically not for sale for consumers anyway!
The Reddit thread explained the reason the system was being sold cheap:
The main reason why is that it is a Frankensystem converted from liquid-cooled to aircooled. Also it is not very pretty and not rackable, because it has a 48V power supply attached. It is originally directly from Nvidia.
I immediately offered to buy it, because why not? If it was a scam, I could always back out, but I wanted to be first in line!
It turns out I live near the seller, and he runs an online shop that sells modified Nvidia server equipment as desktops. It still seemed pretty risky, so I did some research and found a video review of one of his Desktops on Youtube. With the deal now seeming at least plausible, and the seller only a two-hour drive away and agreeing to take cash, it was time to take a Bavarian road trip.
I arrived at a farmhouse in a small forest,